Mr Robot Creator Teases Season 2

MILD SPOILERS FOR SEASON ONE (FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN PUT TWO AND TWO TOGETHER).

“If there’s a headline for season two, it’s how Elliot reconciles with the fact that he’s seeing this fantasy,” says Sam Esmail, creator of Golden Globe-winning TV hit Mr Robot. “That’s the struggle that will take over. In season two there will be a lot more backstory shown.”

Of course, backstory had to be rationed in season one otherwise it may have ruined the reveal the season’s masterful conceit in the final episodes of the occasionally surreal hacker drama. One of the biggest challenges for season two is that now that “reality” has been blown wide open (you could call it a twist but that seems too crude a word) will the show have lost one of the selling points of season one, that made it such a compelling and unusual series?

Listening to Esmail speak about his plans for the new season at a TCA panel yesterday, you start to feel there’s no need to worry. As well as his promise to further explore Elliot’s mental issues, he also teases that there’s a reason why Elliot’s sister Darlene (Carly Chaikin) wasn’t in the Times Square sequence in season finale when he saw his parents in a blur. Intriguing.

It seems we’ll be seeing more of enigmatic, apparently transgender hacker Whiterose (BD Wong) as well. We last saw him (she was a man at the time) in the final moments of season one talking with Evil Corp boss Philip Price (Michael Cristofer) about something in the Congo involving the Coltan mines. “I don’t put anything in the show arbitrarily,” says Esmail. “It’s not going to dominate the second season, but that topic will be addressed. [BD Wong] was so amazing in the first season, I would be stupid not to use him more this season. But I have to use him sparingly.”

And if that last paragraph has totally confused you, here’s how BD Wong explained it to Vulture a while back: “Sam then told me the irony really is that Whiterose is in disguise when Whiterose is a man, and not when Whiterose is a woman. At the end of the episode, when Whiterose meets with Philip Price, Whiterose may or may not be suppressing all of the femaleness of herself to have these conversations with Price. That is a very radical concept, which I don’t know if we have ever seen before. I made it clear to Sam that I am not comfortable with the idea of masquerading. He said, ‘If there is any masquerading at all, it is Whiterose masquerading as the businessman working with Philip Price, not the reverse.’ That, to me, was interesting. I don’t yet know what he means by that, and I hope the show goes a bit further with it.”